This Keeps Getting Better and Better

We are now at Battery Provincial Park just outside St. Peter’s, Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. This is the view from our campsite.

The whole campground is well spaced with great views.

This lovely mown trail leads down from the campsite…

to this view of St. Peter’s Bay off the Atlantic.

There are a number of trails with a scattering of benches…

and views…

and some ruins. The French had a gun battery here and later the English had a small fort.

We drove down next to the park to the St. Peter’s Canal. It joins Bras d’Or Lake to the Atlantic. As a friendly native explained, the “lake” is actually an inland sea.

Boats going from one side to the other go through a lock. This lock is unusual because the high side is determined by the tides. We visited at a very high tide, and you can see that the water level on the ocean side…

is higher than the “lake” side. At low tide this would be reversed.

We watched as a couple of sailboats locked through…

from Bras d’Or Lake to St. Peter’s Bay.

We took a short walk along a shoreline trail…

just far enough to see the lighthouse that guides boats to the canal. The lighthouse sits at the entrance to the campground, we are camped up on the hill beside it.

We might have walked further, but we’d spent an hour or more talking to a couple of Maritimers, Paul and Cathy. He grew up on Prince Edward Island, she in Nova Scotia. They spent 25 years in Kitchener, Ontario and the last five years full time in their motor home. People here are so friendly, it reminded me of the people we would meet sailing.

Beautiful scenery and wonderful people, what more could you ask.